Care?

“We wear no mark; we belong to every class; we permeate every class of the community from the highest to the lowest; and so you see in the woman’s civil war the dear men of my country are discovering it is absolutely impossible to deal with it: you cannot locate it, and you cannot stop it.”

It seems bizarre that more than a hundred years ago, Emmeline Pankhurst’s fierce words rang through the crowded streets of Hartford, Connecticut. Far from London’s soaring cathedrals and rain-engulfed streets, her voice seeped into the homes of revolutionaries, artists, and royals alike, with a single message; injustice will not be overlooked.

Q: In what ways can we help the under representation of women in STEM fields?

A: I think the good news is that this issue is getting a lot more attention than it has in the past. Role modelling and trying to embolden it through awareness. One of the areas I think that has a lot of opportunity, is to help people understand the importance of diversity of thinking, and having women involved in the innovative space; to drive innovation and change. The cognitive diversity that only women can bring into STEM, for instance, in engineering, helps to diminish some of the cognitive biases that prevent radical innovation from occurring.